3 Creepy Books by Women to Pick Up After Binge-Watching You

So, you finished watching You. You’re probably not sleeping too well, and odds are you’re spending a lot of time putting up curtains, changing your locks, and making all of your social media accounts private. We bet you could use a break, so we’ve rounded up three books to read after watching You. All, like Caroline Kepnes’ novel (and its sequel), are written by women and deal with the theme of obsession. These chilling reads won’t help you get to sleep, but they will entertain you.

A young makeup artist, Jessica Farris, is down on her luck, and lies to get into a study a doctor is conducting on morality and ethics. She gets some extra cash and far more than she bargained for. Dr. Shields, who is running the study, wields an alarming control over Jess. For readers who were gripped by the manipulative genius of You’s Joe Goldberg, this is a great book to pick up next.Psst: Head over to BookishFirst for an excerpt of An Anonymous Girl!

Sometimes relationships seem mostly normal on the outside, but there are strange and terrible things happening behind the scenes. This is true in You, and it’s definitely true in Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris, where Jack and Grace have a marriage that almost looks too good to be real. Can’t get enough Behind Closed Doors? We even interviewed B. A. Paris about it.

Part of what makes You so alarming is that a chance encounter gives Joe an opening to insert himself into Beck’s life. This is also the case in The Girl on the Train, where Rachel watches two people she calls Jess and Jason from a distance until she gets the chance to get a little bit closer. This book will make you wonder who is peering into your yard, your home, and your life.

Looking for even more mysteries & thrillers by women? Check out this list.

Elizabeth is Bookish's Senior Editor and a graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in Nonfiction Writing. She is based in San Francisco and can frequently be found at Philz with her nose in a book. Her current obsession is the My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgaard, and she thoroughly embarrassed herself when she met him shortly after the release of volume four (and she has the photos to prove it).